eBay Authenticity Guarantee Program, now for coins

@MasonG said:

@JDark said:

@MasonG said:

@dval2929 said:
A genuine holder with a counterfeit coin might not exist.

I have seen one. It was sent back to the grading service so I'm pretty sure it no longer exists but that doesn't mean others don't.

FWIW...

I have several in my collection...

I'm not surprised. Nobody's perfect, after all. People make mistakes.

That's the whole reason that TPG's have guarantees. They wouldn't need them if they never made a mistake.

@PerryHall said:

@Desert Moon said:

@PerryHall said:
I can see PCGS taking legal action in concert with the FBI against a specific eBay seller who is selling dozens of fake coins in the same fake PCGS slab thus establishing an obvious pattern of fraud.

So what are they waiting for? There has been known frauds on ebay for what, decades? Why now all of a sudden?

I don't know. It's a good question but you'll have to ask PCGS. Perhaps the cost of legal action exceeds the cost of the damage to their brand. I remember in their early years, PCGS and the FBI went after a coin dealer who was counterfeiting their then current rattler slab and this dealer was convicted and sent to prison. PCGS then changed the design of their slab and made it more difficult to counterfeit.

I think the why is pretty simple. It's VERY difficult and expensive with cross border enforcement bordering in impossible. The eBay authenticity guarantee (wonderful program) simplifies enforcement by getting the fakes in house.

How will that work with registered mail? Coins valued over $5000.00 should be sent by registered mail insured and need to be signed for. Ebay is going to pay for registered insured mail for high value coins?

I have not read through this thread entirely, but wonder if PCGS has added a new office for the authentication process. It would take seemingly forever to receive the coins if they had to wait in the grading line.

Here is a fake coin in a fake slab. Anyone want to play the game and report back?

[https://ebay.com/itm/407225163552?

Hmm... while I was typing this, the listing was cancelled by the seller "because there was an error in the listing".

It will probably be back, I have seen this fake date/slab combo sell a few times this year.

The authentication process has added 9 days to the turnaround on my purchase. The approval just came this morning, so September 9 to September 18. Given the time of day of the purchase you might quibble that it was only 8 days.

This was purchased as a raw coin, so it has to actually be authenticated and not just given a quick glance at the slab registry.

As to why I would even buy a key date that was not authenticated, I am building a small set of Indians in a Capital Plastics holder. Even if it were slabbed I would have to crack it out anyway. I don’t plan to resell the coin; I don’t need to convince a downstream buyer of authenticity or grade.

It looks like the seller did their part. They had the item in the mail by 11 AM after a late-evening sale.

Although this is a bit lengthy, I am providing you the entire shipping history. I hope you can tease out the parts of the delay that interest you. If you draw a conclusion, I am interested to hear it too.

There may be some overlap in the history, since I had to take screenshots instead of just copying the text. I think if I used the website instead of the eBay app I would have been able to do a better job of it.

@DotStore said:
Looks like PCGS received the coin on 9/15, and Authenticated it and is sending it Fedex to you on 9/18. They said Authentication to be within 1 or 2 business days -- but it looks like it took 3 business days this time. It's not really an extra 9 days yet if you would have gotten the coin on 9/15, then it's 9/15 plus whenever Fedex delivers the coin is the extra days (which could be more than 9 days, but hopefully less than 9 days). In the end, you got a coin that was Authenticated by PCGS to match the description of the eBay listing.

As you probably know, PCGS doesn't count time from when the carrier says it's shipped. They count time from when they log it as received.

@rec78 said:
Apparently you cannot combine shipping with coins selling over $500 each now?? I just sold one coin for $545 and the other for $321 to the same person. I have to send one to the authenticator and the other to the buyer? What if I sell the same buyer multiple coins that sell for more then $500.00 each-Do I send them all seperetly?
I recently had one buyer buy 8 coins at once and I shipped them in one box. Now I have to ship them in 8 different boxes? Sorry, but this is confusing.
Combining sales used to be automatic.

Each coin that goes through Authenticity Guarantee needs to be shipped by itself (no combined shipping of coins going through the Authenticity process).

@cinque1543 said:
Still building some general understand here. Let's suppose I go to eBay and purchase what appears to be a PCGS-slabbed coin. eBay then sends the slab to PCGS for authentication of the holder. The various possibilities of whether the holder and the coin are authentic appear to boil down to the four scenarios shown below.

But in this example, PCGS (the company) is only going to authenticate the holder. If they deem it to be fake, then we find ourselves in scenario #3 or #4. But is scenario #3 a plausible outcome? Do individuals or organizations acquire real coins, then put them into fake holders? I certainly understand it's a possibility, as they might be inserting a real MS61 coin into fake holder labelled MS64. But does this really happen?

It has happened before. A fake holder with a genuine lower graded coin.

@jmlanzaf said:

@TrickleCharge said:

@cinque1543 said:
Still building some general understand here. Let's suppose I go to eBay and purchase what appears to be a PCGS-slabbed coin. eBay then sends the slab to PCGS for authentication of the holder. The various possibilities of whether the holder and the coin are authentic appear to boil down to the four scenarios shown below.

But in this example, PCGS (the company) is only going to authenticate the holder. If they deem it to be fake, then we find ourselves in scenario #3 or #4. But is scenario #3 a plausible outcome? Do individuals or organizations acquire real coins, then put them into fake holders? I certainly understand it's a possibility, as they might be inserting a real MS61 coin into fake holder labelled MS64. But does this really happen?

It has happened before. A fake holder with a genuine lower graded coin.

Doesn't matter. If the holder is fake, end of story. They also check that out matches the description. A 63 coin in a fake 66 holder is no better than a counterfeit coin.

The program is designed to catch all of that.

Bought a lot of two raw coins over the weekend which will go through the authentication process. Once I get them they will then be sent right back to PCGS.

@slimbert said:
@DotStore (or anyone), do you know when eBay began Authenticity Guarantee for cards?> @rec78 said:

Apparently you cannot combine shipping with coins selling over $500 each now?? I just sold one coin for $545 and the other for $321 to the same person. I have to send one to the authenticator and the other to the buyer? What if I sell the same buyer multiple coins that sell for more then $500.00 each-Do I send them all seperetly?
I recently had one buyer buy 8 coins at once and I shipped them in one box. Now I have to ship them in 8 different boxes? Sorry, but this is confusing.
Combining sales used to be automatic.

That's been my main problem with this program so far. We've had customers purchase multiple $500+ coins on eBay, but we had to ship them separately. I see no reason why we can't ship them together to PCGS, and then PCGS ship them together to the customer. Seems like that should be a win-win-win.

Also, there may be days where we have several $500+ coins sell on eBay. Why can't we just ship them together in one large box to PCGS (with each coin clearly and properly labeled, of course)?

It would be like if submissions to PCGS were all required to be shipped separately. Seems like a big waste.

I had to look it up, and looks like they started Authenticating RAW cards $750+ late January, 2022. They later added graded cards as well as autographed cards. And then they eventually added other features such as submitting the raw card for PSA Grading (for a grading fee in line with their fee schedule), and also storing graded cards in what they call the PSA Vault -- they catalog the card under your personal Vault Address, and keep track of all your cards within their PSA Vault.

For the inability to combine shipping, I can only imagine they are trying to avoid figuring out which in this LOT passes inspection, and which ones do not pass inspection. For them it's straight forward -- single card at a time, it either passes or fails. Nothing to worry about partial verification, and partial rejects. There might be some other accounting type reasons too...

@MasonG said:

@DotStore said:
For the inability to combine shipping, I can only imagine they are trying to avoid figuring out which in this LOT passes inspection, and which ones do not pass inspection. For them it's straight forward -- single card at a time, it either passes or fails. Nothing to worry about partial verification, and partial rejects. There might be some other accounting type reasons too...

I asked ChatGPT if there was anything publicly published that explained eBay's reasoning for their one-at-a-time policy. The result of that inquiry was that no, there's nothing. I then asked for possible reasons why they might have chosen to run the program as they have and this:

"I can only imagine they are trying to avoid figuring out which in this LOT passes inspection, and which ones do not pass inspection. For them it's straight forward -- single card at a time, it either passes or fails. Nothing to worry about partial verification, and partial rejects."

was one of the reasons suggested.

That’s crazy that ChatGPT just quoted me word for word. I seriously just wrote that off the top of my head because that’s what I would be thinking if trying to verify hundreds or thousands of orders per day.,,

@DotStore said:

@clarkbar04 said:
Bought a lot of two raw coins over the weekend which will go through the authentication process. Once I get them they will then be sent right back to PCGS.

Is each coin worth more than $500? I would have the Seller call eBay support to see if the 2-coin lot should follow the Authenticity Guarantee process...

Yes, the aggregate selling price for the lot exceeded the threshhold.

@clarkbar04 said:

@DotStore said:

@clarkbar04 said:
Bought a lot of two raw coins over the weekend which will go through the authentication process. Once I get them they will then be sent right back to PCGS.

Is each coin worth more than $500? I would have the Seller call eBay support to see if the 2-coin lot should follow the Authenticity Guarantee process...

Yes, the aggregate selling price for the lot exceeded the threshhold.

Is each coin worth more than $500?

@DotStore said:

For the inability to combine shipping, I can only imagine they are trying to avoid figuring out which in this LOT passes inspection, and which ones do not pass inspection. For them it's straight forward -- single card at a time, it either passes or fails. Nothing to worry about partial verification, and partial rejects. There might be some other accounting type reasons too...

It's always easier (though not necessarily more efficient) to reconcile "one in, one out" models. Imagine an individual who buys 50 coins on eBay. eBay puts them in a single box with an inventory list showing 50 items, but then mistakenly puts only 49 coins in the box. Now, upon opening the box, PCGS has a reconciliation item to contend with (ie, figuring out which item is missing). I know it sounds trivial, but my guess is they just chose a simpler model to start with from an audit and reconciliation perspective, then will improve upon it at later date if they so choose.

@slimbert said:

@MasonG said:
Has anybody checked the trading card forum here to see how flawed eBay's authentication program is? There should be plenty of comments explaining how it doesn't work by now.

@MsMorrisine created a post on the card forum looking for feedback. It didn't get a lot of action, but the couple responders liked the program. No dissenters chimed in.

If you compare that with a post over there from when the program was fresh, it looked a lot like some of the posts here on the coin forum - some posters thought it was a bad change.

I'd imagine there might be a similar trajectory with coins. Complaints at first, but then people get used to the program and it's not as awful as they first thought.

It's actually that post from @MsMorrisine in the card forum that got my attention so I followed the link and posted here in the Coin forum.

@ProofCollection said:

ebay does not "have to" use registered mail. Undoubtedly they have shipping and insurance arrangements to use whatever shipping method they find to be the most practical.

If too many of their coins go missing, insurance goes up, or insurance stops insuring. And that of course, raises the cost of the Authenticity Guarantee Program. And that of course, will, ultimately have to be passed on to the buyers and the sellers if it affects ebay margins, they have shareholders to answer to...........................

@MasonG said:
eBay has been running their Authenticity Guarantee Program for trading cards for nearly five years, they probably have a pretty good handle on program expenses.

Moon knows better. Everything ebay does is either wrong or nefarious. It's laughable.